Winning

I was hiding behind a barracade while bikers were zooming in front of me. The crowd was appluading, the banners were up flying and the loud speakers were echoing the Chicago suburban streets. It was the Grand Prix of a cycling event in my town. The bikers had an interesting pattern – three of them were leading the pack and were ahead of a big “herd” of bikers by nearly twenty seconds. I was amazed by how the top three bikers had left everyone behind, and now were working extra hard to make an extra inch of lead. The story of the herd – fifty or so bikers – was a little different. The herd leader was putting the most effort, rest of them were almost cruising along. The tail ender had even slowed down sometimes as it had no way of overtaking anyone. Soon enough, the thirty laps were over and the yellow jersey biker raised his hands to beat the other top two bikers. The winner took it by less than a second margin.

As the crowd congratuled the winner and consoled the runners up, I started walking towards my home. I felt the race had a interesting parallel to how the world works – in any game, there are top performers, average performers, and non performers.

Take American population for an example. If we consider monetary wealth as a yardstick, the american population have super rich, middle class, and poor people. As per one statistic, super rich (top 1%) control more than 34% of total private wealth. And as our top three bikers, they are working really hard to maintain their top position, and enjoy a huge gap between themselves and the herd – the middle class. To be fair, the middle class works hard too, but they see a huge gap between themselves (more than twenty seconds in the bike race) and the top three. A gap that is so big, that the herd only compete within the group. Sure, there are upper middle class, middle middle class, and lower middle class, but they stay together in a big mass. Finally, there are non-performers. In the bike race, I did not see any, and for a good reason. Perhaps, they exited the race already and had stopped in between and were not visible anymore. In my analogy, poor people belong to this category.

I could probably think of few more examples, but my point is already made. In any race that you are in – think about which of these three categories do you belong to. Non performers have a good view – they can observe the herd and the top performers, so they see the big picture. But hopefully, you don’t want that view by being a non-performer. Top performers too know they are leading. It’s the middle pack that may be obscured from the big picture view – they see so many bikers around them that they feel content about their position.

Talking about positions, did I mention that I only remembered the guy in yellow jersey who actually made it to the top? The second and third were umm….you get the point!

Any Commuters there?

We used to have desk spaces in our offices. Can you believe that? And to make to those offices, every morning, we would hop on our cars, and spend an average of 25-minute on the commute alone. What a waste! Not only did we junk this time from our lives, but as a nation, we were depleting natural resources and adding to greenhouse emissions.

The commute was not limited to local offices. Professional like salesmen and consultants flew to different states and were out of their home cities for full work week. Though it fueled economic activity, travel was always considered tiring, but necessary nevertheless.

On the other hand, corporations also found travel hitting their bottom line negatively. Seating was expensive. Changing employee workforce was always a challenge. New employees used to sit on temporary seats for few weeks until their seats were allocated. And as business needs changed and teams restructured, reallocating spaces were a political fight. Collaboration with teams in different geographies translated to yawn filled, multitasking conference calls. Yikes!

Then came My Team. The virtual location kit manufacturer revolutionized how people go to work. The kit transforms anyone’s home into a virtual desk space. Superviors can walk through the corridors just as they used to in the physical buildings and see the employees working. The can stop by in anyone’s office and get the status in real time. There is no instant messaging or phone calls – simply face to face interaction. Moreover, old managers have architected their work floor akin to the physical workspace they used to have in the historic times, so they don’t feel nostalgic.

Mr Ben recalls, “I used to get special permission from my boss to work from home for one day a week. Work from home (WFH) was considered unsexy and coworkers laughed away the idea as they imagined you sitting in jammies and watching TV alongside being logged in. The scope of your promotion dwindled as you took more WFH days.” He continues, “Thank to My Team, I can now work from home with the reassurance that my boss knows how much efforts I put in.”

Workers have embraced the concept well and have dedicated spaces in their homes for a quiet, peaceful areas. “I can no longer have my husband walk in my virtual office and ask where the can opener is. If he walks in, he quickly turns away letting me have cooler talk with my colleagues,” admits Karen who recently started using My Team.

Business gurus are still contemplating the impact to the travel industry. There is no concept of rush hour on roads now. People rarely drive their cars. Grocery shopping and leisure travel are the only compelling reasons to drive.